Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  Back then they actually sold fruit at the market. Go figure. Crazy times back then. Each day, his work done, his family supported, he would saddle up and make the long walk home back to Julie. His little girl would be waiting for him on their wide, fan-blowing front porch, would run to him as soon as she saw him come around that corner. He’d be hot and flustered from his day of stress, but it wouldn’t matter one bit. The grisliest murder investigations would all melt off of him instantly—no need for heavy drinking or rumination. Not back then. His little blonde-haired, blue-eyed treasure would grab for his bag from the French Market, asking “What did you bring me today, Daddy?”

  But she would already know, already be reaching for the figs he would hand-select for her each and every day. She loved fruit of all kinds, but figs were her favorite. And so, every day he would pick the best ones he could find from Vietnam-Tom’s stall near the back of the market.

  “You’re my little Figgy,” he would say to her, in those long gone, not-so-lonesome days.

  Goddamn it. Goddamn.

  The dead girl on the highway had been holding something like a plum pit. No connection. She was a girl of a different race and this was a different time entirely. A more confusing and dark and lonely timeline than even a cynic like Melancon could have ever imagined.

  He poured another drink. I love my good cold whisky, but it ain’t no good for me, Willie sang from his darkness.

  “Woah there, cowboy. I know you are far older and wiser than me and all,” Felix was saying, “but I know too much scotch when I see it. And that right there is too much scotch.”

  Melancon stared off into the amber of it. “She was holding…roots.”

  “What now?”

  “The dead girl was holding some kind of plant material, one in each hand. They are running it now. What do you make of that?”

  “Maybe she had picked up a gardening hobby?” Felix’s eyes lowered to the picture of Julie. Melancon twitched, stuffed the photo back into his drawer. He shook his pounding, hot head at his young partner. The boy seemed to understand.

  But Felix had something else to say. “Well, look chief, I just got off the phone with Mr. Lonelyheart. The savior of dogkind everywhere. And he says he can’t pay the bill for the retrieval of his little pupper here. Now, I’m not one to say I told you so, but…”

  “Let’s keep him,” Melancon blurted out. It must have been the scotch talking. A dog around a detective agency? But he liked the mutt already—liked to see his little beady eyes beaming up at him, needing him, loving him just for sitting there and drinking scotch. Each time the dog wagged his tail was like a tick on the clock, setting a pace to things and making the bare and Spartan office seem more like a home.

  “In the case of dogs, I think love does trump hate,” Melancon said, noting that his words were slurring.

  “Just like that, huh?” Felix said, turning to face the animal. “It seems the cuckolded husband was just as bad as his ex-wife. Like he wanted us to take the dog just for spite. I kind of figured.”

  Felix began to stroke the mutt behind the ears. “None of this was because anyone actually gave a damn about you all that much, was it pupper? Sick world we live in, eh? Especially when folks go and get married…”

  “Imagine if they had kids instead of a dog. Just be thankful…” Melancon said, and hiccupped sadly into his now empty glass. “Imagine if…”

  But Melancon’s thought was suddenly interrupted.

  A knock on the door.

  The hell?

  The dog barked once and then lowered his head again.

  Another knock. Three raps.

  David Melancon turned his wavering eyes to the old analogue clock on the wall. It was 9pm. Late in the day for someone legitimate to come knocking. He opened his drawer, laid his Colt Army .38 revolver out on the desk, and told Felix: “Go ahead and see who it is, kid.”

  “You’d probably miss and hit me anyway.” Felix said, looking at the gun. Then he went and squinted through the peephole on the ancient front door.

  “Let’s see…seems to be an Asian man…wearing a…yup, a priest’s collar.”

  “What’s that now?” Melancon put the gun back in its place, took the bottle from off his desk and set it down by the wastebasket. He turned down the devil’s music.

  “Well, seems safe enough to me,” he slurred. “Unless it is a dastardly trick of some kind. Let him in, kid.”

  Felix opened the door. A young Asian man stood outside, already halfway into a shallow bow. He then extended both hands—his right in an open handshake, and his left touching the cuff of his black suit.

  “Hello,” he said. “I am Jin Soo. Please call me Father Kim. May I come in?”

  Felix seemed to be in a state of shock. He had that angle to his head, which he often got when he was trying to figure something out. But, he moved to the side and waved the man in, took his hand and shook.

  “Nice to meet you Father Kim. I’m Felix Herbert, and this guy over there is David Melancon.”

  Another bow in the detective’s direction. This one slightly deeper and longer.

  Father Kim was young and handsome, far too young and handsome to have taken a vow of celibacy. At least that was how Melancon saw it. He was wearing a well-pressed, black suit, and his white collar was stiff with starch. He had dark, almond-colored eyes and a strong, hairless chin. He looked friendly, if uncomfortable.

  “What can we do for you, Father?” Melancon asked, coming around the desk and shaking the man’s hand. He still wasn’t quite drunk enough to attempt to return the bow. Not yet, anyway.

  “Please, my English is not so good. Can we sit and talk?”

  The detective made a gesture in Felix’s direction, and the young man went scrounging around for what fold out chairs he could find.

  “I’d offer you something to drink Father, but as you can see we are in the process of unpacking. Not many creature comforts yet, I’m afraid. Unless…I don’t suppose you’d care for a scotch?”

  “No, no. That is OK. Please forgive my coming so lately,” Father Kim said. He had a sheen of sweat on his forehead now, already glowing with a sense of hidden exertion.

  Once they had sat, Father Kim seemed more comfortable. He watched the dog with some interest as Felix scooted up towards them in a half-broken lawn chair. Finally, they all sat facing each other, and Melancon made an urging, open-palm motion towards the priest.

  “One of my…congregation…is now having a quite difficult time. They are from Seoul. They lived here twenty years for open a beauty supply. Do you know it? Beauty World Plus in Metairie?”

  The two detectives looked at each other, unsure what to say. “Been a while since I’ve been in a beauty supply store, Father. But please, go on,” Melancon said.

  “Well, they are Korean. Not much English, but work very hard. Their daughter was two years old when they moved. And so, she is very much an American.”

  Melancon felt his ears perking up.

  “She is twenty-three now, maybe? Very beautiful.” Father Kim pulled a picture out of his coat pocket, looked at it with a sad smile and passed it to Melancon.

  A girl with similar almond eyes, jet black hair, and oval face as Father Kim smiled from the photograph. It had clearly been altered somehow. The skin was too white and perfect, the face too completely symmetrical, and something just a bit off in a few places, as if blemishes had been edited out. But she was beautiful, there was no denying that. She also looked like a girl with a secret or two, if Melancon’s gut was on point. Her cheeky smile suggested a life that went far beyond this proper church photo.

  Melancon passed it to Felix, who stared wide-eyed but said nothing.

  “What I’m going to tell you, you can never say to anyone,” Father Kim said. They nodded in silence as he prepared to speak. He seemed to be faltering—the sweat on his forehead increased and he began to cough. A handkerchief came out and Felix rose to pat the man on the back.

  “Are you ok, Father?” h
e asked.

  “You will must understand. My heart is very weak.”

  Melancon figured that a vow of celibacy made slightly more sense now, as did a religious disposition.

  “This daughter. Her name is Min Ji. She has been very...naughty? Perhaps that is not the right word. She is not a bad girl, but… she is a lost sheep, as the Bible says. And I am the shepherd. I have failed her, her family.”

  They passed back the picture to the priest, who sat looking at it, a pained expression creeping over his handsome features. It was as if he would weep.

  “She began staying out late at night. She did not follow her parent’s orders. She began seeing men.”

  “Sounds like normal teenager stuff to me Father, but I know that isn’t why you’re here at nine o’clock at night.”

  The priest collected himself, rising to something. “The last time I saw Min Ji, I discovered that she had begun…taking her clothes off…for money…in public…near strange men…for money.”

  The priest collapsed forward, sobbed into his handkerchief. His bangs were wet with perspiration.

  “You mean like stripping?” Felix blurted out, all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

  “I think that is what you call it, yes. Strip club,” Father Kim said. His voice was shaking badly and the blood had run clear out of his face.

  “Do you know where she is now?” Felix asked.

  “No. She hasn’t come home in four days. And then, today. I read the newspapers. Every day with breakfast. Today I saw…”

  Melancon reached out and patted the man on his knee. “Yes, we know what you are talking about Father, the girl out on the interstate. I mean Jesus Chr…I mean…sorry Father. It just was really upsetting to read.”

  He nodded his head. “It makes me very afraid. Very afraid, to think that Min Ji could be alone, by herself, or worse.”

  “In the company of the wrong folks,” Felix said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, have you phoned the police about it?” Melancon asked.

  “Of course, but they did not listen to me. They said to wait and see if she came home on her own. They said that it was normal. Do you understand? Normal for an unmarried girl in her twenties to run away from home. Is this really what is normal in America?”

  The detectives glanced at each other, but said nothing.

  “So, you want us to find her for you, Father?”

  He coughed again into his handkerchief. “Yes. For her parents, she must be found. And they must not know…that she was taking her clothes off for money. NEVER.”

  “Of course,” Melancon said, “and where did you say she was doing the…the stripping Father?”

  “It is the place on Bourbon closest to Canal Street. I don’t know the name.”

  But Melancon did. He knew just the one. Mick’s Gentlemen’s Club.

  “I can’t make any promises, Father,” he said. “But we will begin looking for her immediately. If she is still in the area, I doubt it will be long before we are able to locate her.”

  Melancon surprised himself. The world was swimming, but somehow the idea that someone needed his help had sobered him like a dunk in ice-cold water.

  “There is one more thing,” Father Kim said.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “The last thing she said to me, when I met her, a few weeks ago, to try and talk to her.” The priest pulled at his collar and gasped for breath.

  The two detectives watched him, waited.

  “She told me…She told me that I was a liar.”

  Four

  The next morning landed wet and windy, with a light fog hanging over the streetlamps and casting a malaise over his commute. But by the time Felix had made it most of the way to Basin Street, the clouds were beginning to part. There were now peeks of a lambent, spring-blue sky blinking in and out above him.

  The winter had been a long one, filled with training his right shoulder to heal—crammed right up with the stress of denying himself strong and addictive medicines that would have temporarily made him feel better. Instead, he learned in those cold months to embrace the great pain in a sort of mental bear hug, to make a habit out of hurting. He read the stoics. At last, he learned what it meant to let go of his body’s youthful invulnerability. It was easy after he’d so recently learned the balancing act of letting go of a dead, much beloved big brother. Losing an arm’s full strength and motion was nothing after losing Robert.

  Winter had been all of that, and also the Louisiana State Private Detective Exam, which he’d aced after a month of online classes and late nights studying from his bed.

  And now he was ok and spring was creeping in. His step light and his spirits high, he passed through the door of his new office and found an old man still sleeping on an old couch. Melancon had the newspaper draped over him like a blanket. Felix noticed that the Scotch bottle, entirely empty, lay on its side just out of arm’s length of the detective. The dog was curled up sleeping at Melancon’s feet.

  It was such a perfect picture. The viral headlines reeled in front of his eyes as they always did.

  “Drunk Detective Dozes with Doggy. Criminals Cower.”

  It was a cute picture, but also a depressing one. A portrait of self-destruction. Felix had painted a few of his own, and now had a critical eye for just what this was in front of him.

  A notion hit him then, and he decided to run with it just as quickly. He downed a cup of coffee and decided he wouldn’t waste another second. There was a case. A big case. Involving an actual human. A beautiful woman to rescue. This was not a time for drinking and dozing. So, Felix would seize the initiative, all on his own. He’d go straight to the strip club and start asking questions. Anyway, sleeping on the couch wasn’t going to find Min Ji.

  He looked at the picture of Min Ji for a few minutes, feeling a shiver in his spine. What was it about her? She looked like the kind of girl who you’d fall for at your own peril. Like she would be fun until you disappointed her. She looked like she was waiting for something, and that something was a thing you had better deliver or else get out of the way. But you wouldn’t be able to. You’d try and fail and then do it 100 more times.

  “Ten Signs You Need a Girlfriend,” Felix caught himself thinking.

  He reviewed some of the notes he had made the night before and headed out the door, leaving Melancon snoring.

  Felix walked out into the city to see that the cloud cover had all but burnt away, and the world had shifted into one of those brilliant days the South has in early spring. It was the kind of day before the cloying, suffocating heat of the summer pressed its dark green thumbs into everything and melted all the flowers. Now it was crisp, and everywhere delicate petals and buds were sticking their noses out to investigate this new air.

  He cut into the French Quarter. The morning rain had washed away some of the vomit and grime, and the old buildings shone in the sunlight, the stucco looking bright with its pastel colors. Felix always thought the Quarter looked her best in the mornings: the calliope steam organ’s music coming off the river and dancing between the old alleys and broken sidewalks. In the morning, the oldness of her was charming. But throughout the day the old neighborhood would seem to get more and more haggard, drunk, used up, keen for bad decisions and hard living. The Quarter was an old queen, far past her prime and living on borrowed time. She smoked and swore and whispered to you about a glorious past. She mocked the waters of modernity that threatened to spill in and drown her in irrelevancy and decay—just shrugged her shoulders and kept on living. You knew you would lose her one day, perhaps soon, and that made your every step with her a profound one.

  He went to pick up another coffee on Chartres Street, and as he turned the corner, Felix passed by the same street performer he had grown accustomed to seeing every day. When Felix went to take his lunch at Johnny’s, he was there. When Melancon convinced him to have a nightcap, here was this man blowing his horn. It was as if he were a feature, a lamppost or a hydrant here at the
corner of St. Louis and Chartres.

  Today Felix decided to stop. It was something about the song—something he couldn’t place, like a memory from long ago. The odd-looking man belted and danced, flapping his arms about him in the morning sunshine.

  The musician’s head was oddly bean-shaped, that was always the first thing that Felix noticed about him. It tapered up to a conical, bald crown, widened in the middle, and tapered again into a sharp chin. Despite his black skin the man had white features—the bump in the bridge of the nose, freckles on his cheeks, and bright green eyes. The bean shaped head bobbed and he changed into a stirring rendition of “St. James Infirmary.” Felix listened, watching him.

  He had a strong but loveless voice, full of clarity and power, but lacking something vital.

  His horn blowing, however, had no such gaps. It contained everything. The whole world. He kept his brass polished with a white rag in-between songs. But when he put it to his lips, it was enough to wake those famous Quarter ghosts the tour guides were always prattling on about, have them dancing on spectral feet. It would stop the living in their tracks, turn the whole street into an impressionist painting. All would go still, except for the children. Around the trombone man, this group of children sped about with otherworldly quickness. Lithe of limb and full of energy, they danced like electrons around the central element of blowing brass, percussed his songs on the bottom of five-gallon buckets. Then they pranced around with a top hat asking for tips.

  Today Felix felt the need to place a five-dollar bill in the bucket. He moved on with the sweet lilting of the horn imbued in his step.

  He found Bourbon Street looking rough as usual. The early morning rain had washed the sidewalks, but it had left pools of vile soup twinkling in every pothole. The smell of that brothy regret nearly brought Felix to tears, but he pushed on towards the gentlemen’s club down by Canal.